Where the Rooms Are a Collection of Our Lives
by wigginluvr
Summary: "You're a great deal older than she," says Kingsley. Remus' eyes don't leave the flow of bruised and battered people trailing through the doors to the Great Hall. "Yes," he says. "And painfully aware of it." DH slight AU, Remus/Hermione.


A/N: I'll tell you now: hardcore Remus/Hermione shipping is happening here. Don't like, don't read.

Disclaimer: I wish.

Where the Rooms Are a Collection of Our Lives

The chandelier hanging over the kitchen table in Shell Cottage, Remus thinks, is far too dim. He has to squint at the roughly drawn map of Malfoy Manor, searching between his splayed fingers to make out the thick, navy ink lines as he smoothes out the yellowed parchment on Bill and Fleur's heavy sandalwood dining table.

It's warm in the room, almost stiflingly so, and Remus realizes that he's panting shallowly, struggling to find breath even though it's coming easily, naturally. He swallows, and palms his hair out of his eyes, trying to still his shaking nerves.

"Harry," he says, addressing the disheveled wizard who's leaning on the table across from him. "If this is the main audience hall, where you were brought initially," he points at a hasty rectangle in the center of the sketch, "where is the dungeon in relation?"

Harry, his jaw set and expression solemn, points to a badly illustrated spiral staircase. "Just below there," he says. "It's separated into three main rooms. We were held in the…" he squeezes his eyes shut briefly, shakes his head a little as if to knock his thoughts into place. "In the… center one, I think."

"The left one," says Ron, flatly. It's the first time he's spoken in hours, and his eyes are still glazed over, but Remus sees the flicker of hope in Arthur's gaze as he looks across the room at his son. A moment later the emotion is gone, and Arthur looks back down at his hands, folded on the tabletop.

"The left one?" Remus turns to confirm with Harry, and the boy looks as if he's just remembered, nodding. Remus takes the quill they've been using to draw the map from the ink well near his left hand and begins to mark out a path from the front door to the left dungeon.

Harry pushes himself off from the table, straightening, and squares his shoulders. Remus knows what he's going to say before he speaks.

"You can't come with us, Harry," he says sternly, trying to ignore the flare of anger that passes over the young wizard's face.

"I'm an _adult,_" argues Harry, his hands balling into fists at his sides. "You can't stop me from coming, that's my _best friend _in there –"

"Harry," says Remus, sounding tired. "You are to _important _to risk – "

"So is Hermione!" shouts Harry, and it's the first time anyone has mentioned her name since she's been realized have been left behind. "And she's still stuck in that hellhole_ – "_

"She will be out of that _hellhole_ much more quickly if you simply let us go in and _get her_ and the others," Remus' voice is raised, more so than he can remember it being in the recent past.

"He's right, mate," says Ron, almost muttering. He looks up from under his orange fringe, and his eyes are focused but dejected, seeming almost to droop. "Whatever gets her back, yeah?"

Harry shrinks back slightly, subduing. He chews on the idea for a long moment, sucks thoughtfully on the inside of his cheek, his eyes still smoldering with indecision. "Alright," he forces himself to say, finally. He jabs a finger at Remus, looking murderous, "But she'd better be in one piece, Professor."

O0O

It's dangerous, but they cast invisibility spells on themselves and lie in wait outside the Manor gates, crouched in the carefully trimmed shrubs that line the main drive. The air is cold, crisp, and it strains Remus' throat when he breathes it, so he tries to breath through his nose; it's too stuffed, and he ends up making a rasping sound that has Tonks glaring at him, her gaze flat and icy.

He stops, resignedly, and settles in for the mildly annoying ache, to go with the mildly annoying ache in his feet and the mildly annoying prickle in his skin that tells him that the full moon is coming, and relatively soon.

The silence is eerie, and not even a tree rustles as the scheduled hour passes, ticking by almost viscously. It seems as if there's a minute between each movement of the second hand on Remus' weathered leather and gold watch, and by the time Snape can be seen striding unfalteringly down the cobblestone drive, Remus is sure he isn't the only one eager to charge.

Once the gates are opened, they move slowly, steadily, still low to the ground, wands drawn and poised. Remus' hands are shaking, but then they're always shaking these days. A blood-curdling girl's screaming – not terrified shrieking but _real,_ agonized screaming – can be heard even from outside the dark marble Manor, and Remus' hands start to shake so badly that he fears the moment he casts a spell he'll hit one of his own people, or even himself.

The screams are the only sound, even now, and they echo and ring in Remus' ears, seeming to rise and fall seemingly in time with his desperate heartbeat, with the pounding of blood in his ears. For some reason he can't hear the crunch that he knows their feet – his and Tonks' and Kingsley's and Bill's feet – should make as they trot over the ground, coated with dried leaves and the gentlest dusting of fresh snow.

Snape sends a stoic look in their general direction, nods with a twinge of something that Remus prefers to think is a tiding of good luck, then Disapparates.

They'd decided the go in quietly, slithering their way carefully instead of rushing. When they open the front doors, even though it's just the tiniest crack, just enough to slip through, Remus winces, his chapped upper lip curling in expectation. Thankfully, they're able to get inside without incident. Tonks casts a murmured silencing charm about them, to help them to remain undetected as they move, surely even though Remus has some trouble trusting the directions of a broken, red-haired boy, towards the dungeons.

The screaming is even more haunting, more terribly penetrating when they're directly outside the door to the main audience hall, because Remus can recognize her voice now – it's _Hermione_ – and somehow the knowledge that it's really her, really his former student, and really a girl that he's worked closely with for near three years, starts to break him down inside. He wants to storm in there right now, take down the Death Eaters that may happen to be lurking and Apparate to somewhere safe, to bring Hermione back to her friends and her family.

But this extraction has been planned, so carefully and down to a tee that Remus is turning in line with the other Order members to descend the spiral staircase without really registering that he's doing it.

There's a guard at the bottom of the stairs – a large, brawny fellow in a thin black cloak – but Kingsley makes short work of him with a well-aimed _stupefy._ They try to open the door regularly, but they end up having to break it down, shattering the flimsy wooden doorframe as they do. Their attempt to make the break-in quiet seems only to make it louder, but no one comes running quite yet, and Remus' hands still the tiniest fraction.

"_Lumos,"_ whispers Remus, and the dark, damp dungeon is thrown into a pale relief. There are three figures crouched in the corner, and Remus hopes for a moment that one of them is Hermione, until he realizes that it's her screams that still hurt his ears, her screams that echo from throughout the mansion.

Kingsley and Bill rush forward, pulling the three – Luna Lovegood, Remus now recognizes among them, and Olivander the wand maker; the third is a goblin that he can't remember having ever met – to their neglected, abused feet. Tonks watches the door warily, her hair a jet black color that Remus has never before seen it, casting fervent glances at the werewolf over her shoulder every so often. It seems to take an age for Bill and Kingsley to help the prisoners to the door, quieting them softly, supporting most of their weight.

Remus is uneasy as they ascend the stairs, and not without cause – this is no-doubt the most haphazard, hasty operation they've conducted in the history of the Order, including that whole fiasco at the Ministry – they've no back-up, no alternative escape routes, no insurance, and no prior knowledge save Harry and Ron's word on the layout of the place, save offhanded mentions that Snape may have made of it.

They walk out as quietly as they came in, if a bit more quickly, which shouldn't be so, as they've got extra weight and extra persons to keep track of, but before Remus knows it they've reached the front door, and Bill and Kingsley are rushing out into the half-light. They're gone, lost in the low-hanging mist before Remus can even blink. He can barely hear the sound of their Disapparation.

He and Tonks both have disastrously resigned expressions on their faces. It's a suicide mission, they both know it in their hearts and in their heads, but somehow it's against their very nature, against what they promised the Boy Who Lived, and against what they hold to be right to abandon what they're about to do.

"_No, please!"_ Hermione's guttural, fractured yell wracks Remus' body so violently that he begins to quake again, his hand clenching around his wand. _"Please, we didn't _take _anything!"_ It hurts him, hurts him physically and emotionally and in a host of other ways that he knows it shouldn't, what with the war in full swing as it is, to hear this witch, this strong, brilliant witch reduced to this.

Remus leads the way as they jog, winding their way through the dark mansion to the audience hall that they'd so readily passed by on their way in. They come to a stop in front of the hall doors, impossibly high, thin doors made of black-stained cherry wood that Remus can tell are cold even before he places a hand on them.

He looks over his shoulder to Tonks, who's eyes are wide enough that he can see their whites in the dim. "Are you ready?" he asks, his voice low.

She looks a little shocked at hearing his voice, ragged after the hours it's been in disuse, and nods, her eyes narrowing to a steely glare. "Yeah. Open 'em up."

He does, even though he wishes that there were a better way to do this, a better way than to burst into a room full of Death Eaters to rescue one girl, no matter how important, how essential, how vital, how dangerous, how impossible that girl may be.

It happens quickly; it all happens almost too quickly for Remus to process.

There must be a ward on the door, on the room, for the moment he and Tonks cross the threshold their invisibility spell fails, feeling like cool water as it slides from their skin, pooling around their feet. Everyone in the hall turns to look at them, save the crumpled girl on her side on the floor, expressions of varying shock and disgust and annoyance on their faces, and for a heartbeat no one moves.

Then Tonks stuns the Death Eater closest to her, and he goes down, and then spells are flying so fast that later Remus can't remember who stunned who or who was even present. Hermione's screams stop, and after that he can't hear anything else, and the sounds of the flying spells are only whispers, the sounds of bodies hitting the floor and people darting around only dull thuds.

Hermione tries feebly to sit up, her arms shaking, in the center of the room. Spells slice through the air over her head, but she seems at least coherent enough to avoid those, keeping her head bowed even as she struggles to get her knees underneath her. Her shoulders shrug up to her ears with the strain of it, and she collapses again, whimpering in pain.

"_Remus!" _Tonks cries, but by the time he whirls and locates her she's Disapparating in a confusion of silver and black smoke, the Death Eater Fenrir Greyback clutching her shoulders. It's a horrible sight, a horrible image, of Tonks looking more frightened than he's ever seen her, clawing at the grimy skin of the werewolf who's everything Remus knows he isn't but fears he will become, an image that brands itself into Remus' eyes, refuses to fade.

He doesn't even realize that there's an emerald killing curse rocketing at his chest until he feels a hand grasp his ankle.

O0O

They're in the woods, and it's colder here than it was at Malfoy Manor.

"Professor Lupin," says a weak voice.

He looks down, alarmed; Hermione lays sprawled out across the blanketing of leaves and snow, shivering uncontrollably and bleeding from what seems like everywhere at once – from her arm and from her shoulder and from her chest – her fingers still dragging, pulled by gravity, from his leg. Her fingertips leave a four stark trails of blood across his khaki pants.

He falls to his knees beside her, and his heart is beating faster than it was at the Manor, when they were attempting their idiotic, daring rescue, hammering against the inside of his ribcage as if vying for freedom. Her eyes are half closed, and that, more than anything else, scares him. He seizes her chin with one hand, holds her face in what he hopes is at least some semblance of comfort, and starts to work her jacket off her with the other – he knows, at least, to do that.

She's wearing a tee-shirt underneath, and he thinks it may have been grey once but it's now soaked so thoroughly with blood that it's utterly crimson. He touches her stomach, thinks about trying to remove the shirt as well, but she cries out in pain and writhes under his touch, her back arching against the frozen ground. Remus instead charms her shirt away, leaving her in a pale blue bra; he knows she must be freezing, but he writes hypothermia off as second-priority for now.

Dozens of lacerations have been torn into her skin, some raggedly and some with precision. Remus feels sick, and a rush of something like rage flushes through him, followed closely by a seizing panic that threatens to paralyze him. "I…" he mutters frantically. "I… _Sectumsempra_ – I don't know the counter spell."

Hermione makes a gurgling noise in the back of her throat, and blood bubbles up past her lips, dragging a dark line across his fingers, which still hold her face. To have her blood on his hands, if at all possible, makes him feel even sicker.

"Hermione," he tries to shake her gently, but he honestly doesn't care at this point if he causes her any discomfort so long as she's alright in the long run, so long as she _lives._ "What's the counter spell?"

A flicker of recognition stirs in her eyes – or at least, in what he can see of them – and she tries to speak, but her lips are shaking so badly that she has trouble. "_V-v-vulner-r-a sanentur," _she says it fluidly, almost like a song, and Remus tries to mimic her melodic tone, but finds that all he can manage is drawn-out speech.

He waves his wand over her, and nothing happens at first; fear floods into him, making his hands start to shake again. "Hermione," he says, even though the chances that she'll be able to help him at this point are slim to none.

"Three times," she has difficulty saying, her voice so mangled that Remus barely hears her, then questions if he heard her right, then decides that he's wasting too much time.

He starts again, waving his wand in slow, uneven circles – he knows they should be even but can't manage it for the life of him – and trying to _sing _the spell under his breath. It seems to be working, the wounds knit themselves together as Hermione bucks and worries her lip between her teeth to keep from making a sound – it must be incredibly painful, for despite her efforts, she moans in agony, squeezing her eyes shut.

When he's finished, only her arm is still bleeding. He sets out to remedy that as well, but for some reason the counter spell doesn't work, only makes her bleed more profusely. He tries twice, becoming more frustrated and hopeless with every go, before Hermione reaches out and snatches his hand, stopping his wand.

She just gazes at him for a moment, seems to be thinking, and Remus notices that the ever-present prickling in his skin has escalated to a steady burn where her skin touches his. Something stirs inside him, and he looks at her, really looks at her beneath the blood and grime. Before he can realize that she's beautiful, she lets go of his hand.

"The spell," she says, and Remus is filled with warmth to hear her voice almost at its full volume, steadier and more confident than before; she's no longer shaking, though he is. "The spell Bellatrix used on my arm doesn't have a counter-spell. It can't properly be healed." She frowns slightly, and he sees tears pool in her brown eyes for a moment before she wipes them away with her hand, smearing blood across the bridge of her nose. "Here, let me."

She takes his wand, and she doesn't ask but he doesn't protest. "_Tergeo,"_ she says quietly. The blood is gradually siphoned off her arm, and when he realizes that the wound isn't just a random scratch but the word _mudblood, _dug into her skin so deeply that it will probably never heal, he has to look away, at the snowy wooded landscape that does practically nothing to calm his raging heart.

Hermione doesn't seem to notice, instead inclines her head at an uncomfortable angle so that she can administer another spell; "_Ferula,"_ she mutters fiercely, sounding much more like herself. A bandage springs forth from his wand and wraps around her arm, binding it so as to stop the bleeding. It's only when the gruesome wound is fully covered that Remus can look back down at her.

She hands him back his wand, her fingertips lingering against his knuckles, and examines the bandages she's conjured. The expression she makes suggests them to be merely sufficient, not a true reflection of her ability with the spell. Remus admires that, even now, she can be worried about the quality of her handiwork.

"Are you wounded anywhere else?" he asks, concern staining his voice.

"I don't think so," she shakes her head, tries to sit up on her own. She manages to get her elbows underneath her, but the ground seems to slick, and her limbs seem too weak for her to manage much else.

"Let me help," says Remus. He tucks his wand quickly inside his jacket and gets a hand under her, trying to keep his hand flattened in between his shoulder blades, but his little finger slips under the back strap of her bra. She either doesn't notice or doesn't care, just offers him a shy, grateful smile.

The snow beneath her is mingled with her lifeblood, an unimaginably dark color that stands out against the surrounding whiteness and makes Remus' stomach flip over.

Hermione reaches for her shirt, and Remus casts a cleaning charm over them before she can put them back on, cringing internally at the thought of her having to wear a shirt and jacket with her own congealed blood on them. He can't help but notice the way she stretches to get them over her head, her flat stomach lengthening appealingly, but tries to concentrate on the way she winces in pain, tries to concentrate his mostly unidentifiable emotions into a single one of identifiable sympathy. Because when it comes down to it, even if he wants to, he can't. She's young enough to be his daughter.

"The Cruciatus curse?" he asks, even though he already knows the answer.

She presses her lips together, inclines her gaze, tucking a strand of her unruly hair behind one ear. "You've… experienced it, then, Professor?" she asks, and her voice is small, much smaller than when she'd been healing a few moments ago.

Remus' eyes grow sad, and he wishes for a moment he could hold her, but instead just _scourgify'_s her jacket before handing it across to her. "No," he says, and he tries to make his voice gentle but it comes off a bit harsh. "I've just… seen the effects."

Hermione doesn't reply, but she raises her eyes to meet his.

Remus doesn't speak for a long moment, his eyes locked with hers, and realizes that her pupils are not only a chocolate brown, but are flecked with a creamy gold. "We should get you back," he says, and holds out a hand to her. "Do you think you can Apparate yet?"

She shakes her head at his hand, and turns her head to look off into the forest. Remus notices that there's blood matted into the back of her hair, sticking her snarled curls into a heavy-looking clump. He reaches inside his jacked for his wand, intending to clean the blood while she's not looking, but his hand falls back into his lap when she speaks.

"I used to come here with my parents," she says, laughing in what Remus quickly picks out as an attempt to mask a sob. Hermione hugs her jacket tighter around herself, folding her arms across her stomach. "I don't know why, but it just popped into my head. I guess I must've been thinking about them while…" she trails off, casts a glance at him over her shoulder that's so rushed he can only barely make out the tear that dribbles down her cheek.

She lets her head drop, and Remus kneels and watches her in silence, unsure of what to say.

"I can't go back," she says, very quietly. "Not until I've got all my strength back. I can't – " she chokes on a sob that gets caught up on a hiccup, deteriorates into shallow sobs for a moment, and then swallows. "I can't let everyone see me like this."

Remus thinks he understands, but he doesn't want to – doesn't want what he thinks she means to be the truth. "Like what?" he asks.

"Weak."

He shakes his head at her words, reaches out and grasps his shoulder before he realizes what he's doing. "You aren't weak," he says, and he means it more than he's ever really meant anything.

She looks down at his hand, still with one rusty crimson streak of her blood across the backs of his fingers, and pulls a watery, lopsided smile that tugs at his heartstrings. "Then why did…" she muffles a hiccup behind closed lips, her brow furrowing. "Why did all this happen? Why couldn't I stop it?"

The real question, Remus is beginning to realize, is _why couldn't _he?

O0O

She takes his wand again without asking and transfigures the galleons that he finds in his deep coat pockets into Muggle money. He can tell that she's trying to keep her voice from shaking, keep from letting her sleeve ride too much up her arm, lest the bloody bandages peek out, as she speaks to the cheery employee behind the counter at the campground headquarters.

Remus decides to stay with her, in the end. She needs protection, he tells himself, is too valuable to loose again. He knows that he's kidding himself, knows that he's thinking with his heart and not his head, but can't fathom leaving this broken and helpless girl – she doesn't even have her _wand,_ for Merlin's sake – alone.

He should make her go back to the Order headquarters, or at least to Shell Cottage, where he knows Harry and Ron are staying, or to the Burrow. Molly, he knows, would be happy to have her, happy to take care of her – she, as they all do, needs any distraction she can get her hands on. But she doesn't want to go to that weak semblance of home, doesn't want them to see her weak, even when he tells her she's not, tells her she's at her strongest for having survived the ordeal.

Hermione just shakes her head at him and rents Cabin 4A.

The employee behind the counter tells them that it's fully stocked with food and toiletries, and Remus thinks that that's the best news he's heard all week. He's coated in grime and blood that he's pretty confident isn't his, and with the full moon a week or so away, he's ravenously hungry.

Hermione leads the way, and they walk up a thin dirt and gravel path, through the forest of bare trees and low shrubbery that's lost all it's leaves, leaving it a confusing web of twigs and thicker trunks. He gets the sense that she's walked this path before, sure as her strides are, and has to walk more quickly than he usually does. Her legs must be very long, he remarks silently, to propel her so; once that thought is in his head it nags and nibbles at his brain until he has to give up the hope of a hot shower in favor of a cold.

It's insane, he knows, and morally wrong for him to be watching her hips as she walks instead of watching where he's stepping, because she's half his age and he's never really known her outside his classroom in her third year. Apart from muttered greetings and communal debates at the kitchen table of No. 12 Grimuald Place, which he doesn't really count as teaching him anything about her, save that she has an admirably quick wit and an impressive mind. That, however, he already knew.

The cabin is a homey little thing – Remus can tell that even from outside it – made of logs and some white adhesive like cement. Hermione's stride falters on the doorstep, and the key hangs on the tip of her finger for an indecisive moment before she shoves it almost roughly into the lock and forces the door open, tumbling into the room.

Remus follows her, drawing his wand almost cautiously out of his inside jacket pocket, trying to bit back his innate paranoia at having to walk into a dark room. "_Lumos," _he murmurs. A white-blue light flares to life at the end of his wand, casting a pale glow over the room.

When he looks up, Hermione's struggling to suppress a smile; at his bewildered look she has to smother a giggle, pressing her fingers to her mouth.

"What?" he asks, and she laughs openly. He decides that he likes her smile, and adds that to the list of reasons he has to stay with her for the next six days – to make her smile and watch her while she does.

"Nothing," she says, but he knows that she's amused by some private joke. "It's just you purebloods –"

"Half-blood," he corrects her, his voice a little stern even though he tries to keep it from being so.

Her eyes turn serious, but the smile continues to curl her lips, appealingly so. "Yes, well, just the same," she says. He hates himself for watching the way her lips move in the pale wand-light, hates himself for the way the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand up as she leans past him to rub her hand up the wall. "Light-switch," she explains to him, just as the lamps flicker to life, their bulbs glowing steadily.

He's relieved to be able to see the whole room, but still doesn't feel safe. He'll cast wards around the perimeter of the lot later, then.

O0O

Remus awakes to the sound of her screaming, and for a moment he's back in Malfoy Manor, standing in the strangling darkness outside the main audience hall. Then he's got his wand out by reflex, and the room is thrown into a haunting relief, and he realizes that he's in a nice warm cabin in the middle of some quaint little woods. The only thing that still scares him is that he has no idea why she's screaming.

It sounds – he shudders to think of it – it sounds like she's being tortured again.

His weary limbs scream in protest as he pulls himself out of his bed prematurely and staggers to the door, twisting open the bronze-stained knob with a twist of his wrist. He's down the hall and inside her room without realizing that he's even moving, without knocking, without thinking of it in any way shape or form. He can't identify the frenzied feeling that seizes his chest, the way he goes cold from his head to his toes, but he decides that he doesn't want to feel it too often, doesn't want to feel it ever again, if possible.

A nagging little voice in the back of his head reminds him of Hermione's explanation earlier that day, about the Muggle contraption that he can only vaguely remember from his youth, but he can't grasp the thought enough to put it to use; instead, he keeps his wand out and pads across the thick oriental rug on the floor over to her bedside.

She's thrashing, her head tossing limply from side to side, denting the pillow that he can already tell is dampened with sweat. Her fists are grasping at thin air, the tendons on the undersides of her wrists jumping out alarmingly, and her knees come up under the blankets as she drags them to her chest, finally curling onto her side in a protective position that has Remus' own eyes pooling with tears of what he fails to convince himself is sympathy.

He sets his wand on the bedside table, dousing the light; it takes a few heartbreakingly long moments for his eyes to adjust to the light, and he tries to wait, but it hurts too much to just stand there and listen to her agony – it hurts more than it should, considering the slightly impersonal circumstances.

When he can bear it no longer, he sits – throws himself, really – down on the edge of her bed, the bedclothes straining underneath him as she almost instinctively moves away from him. He puts a hand on her shoulder, and is almost startled to realize that it's bare, is almost startled to feel her skin almost feverish under his touch, but gives it a light squeeze all the same, shaking her gently in much the same way he did earlier, when she was bleeding out on the ground and frighteningly silent. Somehow he's more scared now, more worried for her now.

"Hermione," he says quietly, unable and somewhat unwilling to keep the urgency out of his voice because really, could even Hermione Granger notice such a minor detail in her sleep-muddled state?

She doesn't wake, just shies away from him further. He leans down over her, trying to grasp her other shoulder but failing to find it for the way she's pinned her injured arm defensively under her body. "Hermione," he says again, more forcefully. "Hermione, dear, wake up," he doesn't mean to let the endearment slip, but can't seem to remember why on earth he would care when her eyes flutter open a moment later, shining with moisture in the semidarkness.

"Professor," she breathes. She props herself up on her elbows, and as the sheets fall down off her waist to reveal that she's abandoned her dirtied jeans in favor of her respectable blue knickers – which, he notes, match her bra – something uncoils near his navel. He ensures that he's sitting a respectable distance from her, lets his hand fall from her slight shoulder. "I'm sorry," she's saying. "Did I wake you, I didn't realize…"

She trails off, looks down at her arm which is now bleeding profusely through the tightly-wrapped bandages. "Oh," she says. She's reaching over him for his wand before she begins to speak again, asking, "Do you mind if I borrow this?"

It's the first time she's actually voiced the question, rather than assuming it to be implied – just as his answer every time has been implied. Remus nods, even though it's quite clear she's not waiting for a response.

She cuts down her bandages, vanishes them, and then murmurs, "_Ferula_."Her hands are shaking when she hands it back, and it's almost as if she doesn't want to let it go. His hands are shaking when he accepts it, and it's almost as if he doesn't really want to take it.

"Thanks," she says, and she's whispering almost by reflex, even though they're neither in a crowded dormitory nor in the crowded Burrow. "I just… I hate being without my wand." She inclines her head as if she's almost ashamed to admit it, her gaze downcast into her lap. A tear streams down her face, and that seems to be the witch's breaking point – she dissolves into quiet, wracking sobs a moment later, her arms coming up to wrap around her torso. It looks, Remus thinks, as if she's trying to hold the rapidly separating pieces of herself together.

He knows he'll regret it later, but he reaches out and draws her to his chest, holds her with almost fierce tenderness as she cries, her hair tickling the bottom of his chin, her fingers curling into his chest with frayed desperation.

"Thank you," she sniffs, her face buried in his shirt collar.

"For what?" He holds her, resolutely, a little bit closer, a little bit tighter.

"For staying with me."

O0O

When he wakes up, it's already midday.

Sunlight's streaming in through the cabin's small, dusty windows, a pale yellow that floods the room. He's lying on the floral-patterned, overstuffed couch, his head pillowed on his folded arm, a shabby throw blanket drawn up to his chin. It's uncomfortable, lying like that, and he's horribly aware of the crick in his neck and the cramp in his lower back, with his jeans and heavy burgundy shirt pressing creases into his skin.

Neither he nor Hermione got much sleep last night, insomnia on account of her nightmares and his dogging concern keeping them painfully awake. They'd settled down in the cozy cabin sitting room, eventually, preferring a calming game of chess – Muggle chess, not wizard's chess – to any more restless attempts at sleep, which were made in exhaustion-muddled futility. They'd each won their fair share of matches, though he was almost certain that she'd won one more than he, and had simply kept the count to herself; that was simply one more thing about her that made him smile.

She had fallen asleep on the armchair, around dawn, and he'd reclined on the couch. Watching her until he was sure she was sleeping peacefully, he'd let his eyes closed feeling significantly older than he strictly was. It was just, she looked so young when she was sleeping, and when he looked down at his hand and it was sun-stained and scarred and weathered and thick and not as youthful as it had once been, and at that a deep sadness had seeped into his bones, like a persistent ache.

Remus yawns, the unshaved whiskers that pepper his upper lip tickling the inside of his nose, and stretches his arms high above his head, hoping to unlock some of his knotted muscles. The only thing he succeeds in doing is upsetting the lamp on the side table, which he careens over towards just enough to bump it, setting it waddling back and forth on its circular base.

Hermione isn't in the armchair across from him anymore, but the ugly yellow, knit blanket she was sleeping under is, draped over one arm of the chair, its fringe barely brushing the floor. Remus can hear the shower on in the bathroom, the water drumming almost rhythmically against the floor and the wall, the steam from the heat of it leaking out from under the door. He briefly laments the lost prayer of a warm shower, but knows that it's her who needs it more, even though he longs to get the lingering feel of her blood off of the back of his hand.

He stands lethargically, shucking the blanket off him and leaving it on the couch. His knees make a troubling popping sound, and the sharp pain in his joints that he's just gotten used to having near the full moon sets in, jabbing at his ligaments.

Neither of them have yet used the tiny kitchenette jammed into an alcove next to the back door, and Remus doesn't really understand the different Muggle contraptions – it's been so long since his mother held him and walked around their kitchen and told him that even though he would grow up to be a wizard he was never allowed to forget the Muggle things. Yet here he is, thirty-some years old – he can hardly keep track nowadays – forgetting the things his mother taught him.

He opens a large robin's-egg-blue box that he vaguely remembers has something to do with keeping food cold and rummages inside it, pulls out a thin carton of milk. The first cabinet he opens has glasses in it, and he takes one delicately between his thumb and forefinger, settling it on top of the icebox to pour himself a glass of milk; he knows it's odd, but he's always been partial to milk in the morning. It sticks a bit in his moustache and his clipped beard, and he tries to wipe it away, but he's pretty sure he only succeeds in making sure that it won't come off easily. He hopes the cabin is stocked with washcloths. He perches on the edge of the armchair that Hermione vacated and polishes off his milk, enjoying the way the cold liquid slides down his throat and settles in his stomach, refreshing.

The shower shuts off abruptly, and Remus almost starts to relish the silence, relish the dormant, fleeting thrill that comes with serenity.

"Professor Lupin," he decides he likes her voice better than the silence. She comes out of the bathroom dressed in her same clothes – there's really nothing else she could be wearing, he supposes – towel drying her hair with her head tilted to the side. It exposes the side of her slender neck, pale and tantalizingly smooth without her hair to cover it; Remus' fingers itch with what he tentatively identifies as the desire to touch it, and he tucks his hands as discreetly as he can into the front pockets of his jeans.

"Hermione," he says, in greeting. "Good morn – or rather, good afternoon."

She smiles and stops her rigorous ministrations with the towel, twisting it into a rope before hanging it around her neck. "You wouldn't happen to know the counter spell to the Flagantre Curse, would you?" she smiles as she says it, but it doesn't really reach her eyes. Her pant legs, he notices, are rolled up to her knees, revealing her calves; they're spotted with puckered burns that he hopes he's only imagining, even as he acknowledges that they're real. He can cling to the possibility, however, that he's mistaking the shape of them for those of Dark Marks.

"What?" he asks blankly, and it seems fitting that she would be the first one in as long as he can remember to leave him speechless.

Hermione looks suddenly uncomfortable, her brows knitting together. "While I was… in there," she says slowly, "Bellatrix used the Flagantre Curse on me, and the burns it left behind are actually quite painful." She gives a pathetic little laugh, as if to lighten the mood, though Remus cannot see how humor could possibly be brought to the situation. She still tries, however, and he cannot fathom how she could think herself weak when she's so strong as to seem unaffected.

"I um…" he shakes himself, tries not to imagine the other horrors she must've faced while in there even while this newly discovered one starts to eat him inside. "No, I don't know the counter spell." Then, sincerely, "I'm so sorry."

She smiles again, as if to console him even though _she's _the one who needs consoling. "That's alright, Professor," she says. "I'll just put some aloe on to help it to heal naturally. I swore they used to keep bottles of it in the bathroom cabinets." She turns to leave, as if the conversation they've just had is an everyday occurrence, as if witches and wizards are always talking so casually about the burns inflicted on someone during torture.

And he lets her go.

O0O

He finds her sitting in her room on the morning of their third day, after another relatively sleepless night, tucked away at a heavy bureau and writing furiously. She's using a regular pen – not the usual wizard quill, but a ballpoint pen – and her untied hair is hanging in a curtain, concealing her face. He knocks quietly, even though the door is already open, and leans sideways against the doorframe to watch her, bathed in the morning light that leaks through the uncovered window.

She whips around, looking startled. "Professor," she says, tucking her frizzy curls behind one ear.

"Hermione," he replies. "Who are you writing to?" He's worried that she might endanger them, of course, but more curious as to who she could have to be writing to, and what she would have to be writing about.

"Harry and Ron," she says shortly. "Well, the entire Order, I suppose." She looks up at him, almost guiltily. "I'd just remembered that we separated from the rest of the group – we've never even told them that we're alive. They're probably worried sick, the poor lot."

Remus' eyebrows fly to his hairline. "I'd completely forgotten," he admits, confused both for his lack of memory and his inconsiderateness towards the organization to which he has committed his life, the people who have become his family. "But why not use a Patronus?"

"Muggles," she answers, without missing a beat, turning back around to polish off her letter. "They're all over the campground, and I know we've got wards up but one of them would be bound to see it. It's just too risky." He nods, accepting her answer; her actions are well thought out, as they always are.

Hermione looks almost regretful. "I'll have to send it by Muggle post, anyways." She starts swinging her legs under the desk, her trainers squeaking over the floor, and if Remus didn't know any better he'd think that it was to distract her, almost a nervous tic.

O0O

She's taken to making them dinner every night before bed. If they're going to be up anyways, she reckons, then why do it on an empty stomach? He almost seizes her and kisses her for the thought right there and then, but somehow he manages to stay on the other side of the low coffee table. It doesn't escape him, however, how low and easily-overcome an obstacle the table is, or how deliciously red and inviting her lips look when they're parted oh-so-imperceptibly like that. He's almost given up trying to suppress the feelings, but then, if he wasn't still trying at least a fraction, he would've given in to the animal urges by now.

They've got two night's worth of leftovers still in the icebox – Remus knows now for sure that it's an icebox, as she's explained all the kitchen appliances to him – and he tells her that they should just eat those first, that it's not necessary to make more if they already have the stacks of full Tupperware containers.

She's already setting a pan on the stove – electric coil, she'd told Remus it's called – and she turns the knobs to the same place she's been turning them every night, setting the stove burning. Then she turns to face him, folding her arms across her chest with a silently thoughtful look – not the furiously thoughtful look that he's noticed she gets while reading, but a more subtle one. "I think it calms me down," she says; it's the first time he's heard her honestly unsure.

He nods, not trusting himself to say anything lest he upset her in this obviously fragile state, and pulls over a chair from the small four-person kitchen table that sits in between the kitchenette and the sitting area. He lines it up so he'll be able to see her face while he talks to her, watch her while she cooks; the domesticity of it all hits him in a breathtaking wave, and he puts his hand to his chin and contemplates it for a moment, comes to the decision that he likes this temporary semblance of stability.

"What are you making?" he asks.

She smiles, brushing a lock of hair that's fallen out of her loose bun out of her face. He suppresses the urge to sweep up and do it for her. "Chicken stir fry," she answers, her voice more carefree and level than he's heard it in the past few days. "We only had some peppers left for vegetables, so I got the idea and picked up some chicken while I was out at the campground office mailing the post."

Remus doesn't really listen to her explanation, too distracted by the dexterous way her slim fingers work as she sets to work chopping the peppers on one of the burners that's not turned on. "Hmm, sounds wonderful," he hums.

She smiles, radiantly. "If I do it right, yeah," she snickers. "My mum used to make it perfectly, fried just enough to be a little crunchy on the outside and a little stringy on the inside, but I've never tried it before, and since I don't have a recipe –" she stops, seems to realize that she's been babbling. "Sorry."

He shakes his head slightly, resisting the urge to tilt his head and hide his remorseful, pitying expression – he wants her, for just this once, to realize that he _cares._ "Nothing to be sorry for, my dear," he adds the endearment on purpose that time, and sees her flush delicately under her light splattering of freckles. It makes his stomach drop, makes his throat so dry that he has to swallow in an attempt to wet it again; he'd go for a glass of water, but to get to the dish cabinet he'd have to lean far too closely to her.

"I never thought to ask my mum how she made it," her voice brings him out of his haze. "And now, I suppose I'll just have to go about figuring it out myself," her words fall out in a jumble, a jumble that he can tell is deliberately rushed. She sniffs, rubs her sleeve across her eyes so forcefully that it leaves them puffy and red; she sniffs again, can't seem to stop herself even as she rubs her eyes repeatedly.

He lets this go on for all of a minute, then says, "Tell me." He tries to sound sympathetic, tries not to seem like he's desperate to hold her and kiss her head and murmur sweet nothings until she's sleeping and calmed in his arms.

She presses her lips together, takes a deep breath through her nose that's so violent her nostrils flare. "My um… my parents," she begins, turning her face away from him to rub her eyes again. For a moment she's silent, and the only sounds in the entire cabin are the sizzling of the chicken in the pan and the methodical _tick-tock _of Remus' watch. "My parents," she tries again, and her voice is a bit stronger. "I had to _obliviate _them, to keep them safe. Erased everything about the Wizarding World, then sent them to Australia." She turns back, looks him dead in the eye with a gaze that's watery but, somehow, unwavering. "They don't even know they have a daughter."

He stands slowly, saunters up behind her with a jerk in his step that betrays his internal trepidation, and wraps his arms around her waist to pull her back against his chest, holding her like he's so religiously wanted to since he pulled her out of that _hellhole. _She doesn't pull away, just keeps chopping the peppers and crying, and he wishes they were onions because that would excuse the tears that are falling from his eyes as he presses his face into her shoulder.

O0O

There's a bookshelf in the cabin, at the end of the hallway that leads to their bedrooms, and it's stocked with enormous, dusty tomes with decrepit leather spines. With no light at the end of the hallway, Remus doesn't even notice it until he walks out of the bathroom on the evening of the fifth day and sees Hermione picking through it, running her fingers over the books almost lovingly.

He pauses, watches her as she goes up on her toes and pulls a volume from the top shelf, huffing in slight exertion as she settles it on her arm, resting it in the crook of her elbow. Her shoulders set triumphantly – it's a sign of how far gone he is that he can tell her emotions just from the way she holds her shoulders, from behind, even – she turns on her heel and comes down the hallway towards him, the old floorboards creaking under her feet. She smiles when she sees him, her eyes barely crinkling around the edges.

"Good morning, Professor Lupin," she greets him. He almost wishes she wouldn't call him _professor_, because it only reminds him of their position – even though they're in a cabin in who-knows-what forest, the only wizards for miles in all directions, they're somehow still living by the bounds of his age and her youth – but he thinks he's hardly in any position to ask her to call him otherwise.

"Good morning, Hermione," he replies. "What are you reading?"

She looks down at the book's cover with what he might've thought to be distaste, if he thought her to be capable of distaste towards any book. "_A History of Citizenship,_" she says, speaking in that authorative way that he always knew he liked, even back at Hogwarts.

He raises his eyebrows at the dull-sounding title – it sounds boring even to him, and he was just like Hermione at school – and jokes, "Well, if that's where your interests lie, then by all means."

She gapes playfully at his smirk, smacks him on the bicep with her book. He rubs his arm, feigning pain even though he really doesn't need to, as it's a rather thick tome. "I'll have you know," she retorts, the quickness back in her wit. "That I've read all the others, thank you very much."

He chuckles, smiling genuinely. "So instead of fancying to reread a favourite, you decide on _A History of Citizenship?_"

She draws the tome to her chest, defensive. "My favourite's not in this cabin, _actually_," she says, almost sounding smug at her argument.

He slips past her down the hallway, peering through the gloom at the books stacked on the shelf. There doesn't seem to be any particular order to them, so he takes a few moments to scan them, his eyes intent on the books even though he can feel her eyes intent on the back of his head, and cries out lightly in achievement as he pulls a slim volume from the shelf. "Well," he says, turning back around to face her and slapping the book against his palm; his action results in a plume of dust that rises and makes his nose itch. "Mine, it just so happens, is."

She takes it from him, dumps _A History of Citizenship _unceremoniously in his hands; her eyes admire the aged cover for barely a moment before she opens it up and rifles through the somehow pristine pages, the words flashing before her eyes. "I do so love John Steinbeck," she admits, not looking up from the book. "His stories have a bit of a haunting charm to them."

He nods, and lets himself give into the urge to trail two fingers across her forehead, clearing the hair away so he can see her chocolate-colored eyes. "I fear, however, that this one is a tragedy."

She looks up at him, and when he goes to move his hand away from her face, she holds it there with one of her own, leans into his touch. "As are all the best," she whispers.

O0O

It is with great reluctance that he wakes on the sixth day.

They're both on the couch this time – she's in his arms, her head tucked under his chin, _Of Mice and Men _still open in her lap, held open by her limp hand. Their legs are tangled, and it should be uncomfortable with their stiff jeans but really it's not, it's natural and the most comfortable way Remus has ever slept, at least in the past twenty years or so. One of her hands is tucked under her cheek, her knuckles pressed into the skin that covers his collarbone, but the other is under his waist, fisted and buried in his thick shirt so tightly that he fears – no, he _hopes_ – they'll have trouble untangling once she wakes.

Because he's not going to wake her himself, not when he can lie here undetected and hold her and listen to the sound of her shallow breathing, reassuringly constant and impossibly endearing at the same time. He traces absent little patterns on her stomach, her tee shirt bunching around his finger and making him wish more and more that it was gone, that he could run the pads of his fingers over her bare skin.

Her hair tickles his neck, tickles his throat so that he has to swallow even though he doesn't really want to rid himself of the sensation. She stirs in her sleep, adjusting her head so that her mouth is pressed into the scruff that coats the underside of his chin, and a shiver runs down his spine, like a single drop of water that travels under skin and feels brilliant as it does.

She murmurs something incoherent, and her hand tightens on his side; his arms instinctively tighten around her slight form, so tightly he fears he might crush her, hopes they might melt into each other. He listens more carefully the second time she speaks, thinks he hears his name – not _professor,_ but _Remus._ His heart skips a beat, and he tilts his head unconsciously lower, his ear closer to her lips; "Remus," she mutters again, her fingers digging into the skin above his hip.

When her eyes begin to flutter open, he can feel it against his jaw, and his heart plummets – she'll rush away surely, be eager to distance herself from him after waking in so unbecoming of a position. But then her eyes are fully open, and she's awake, and she's still lying there, lying calmly in his arms so willingly that for a moment he allows himself to think that maybe she _wants to_.

"Good morning, Professor," she says, her words slurred with grogginess. He might be imagining it, but he thinks he feels her settle more comfortably on his chest, taking her hand out from under her cheek to lay across his shoulder.

"Good morning, Hermione," he murmurs, fingering a lock of her hair. "Sleep well?"

She smiles, and he feels it against his throat. "Yes, thank you," she says, unconcerned in the slightest by their current situation. "Better than I have in a while."

He throws caution to the wind, because if she's comfortable with this, why can't he be? and kisses the side of her head, lets his lips linger there for a great deal longer than is strictly necessary to convey his point, enjoying the feel of her hair pressing up between his lips. "Good," he says, but doesn't move away from her. "You're getting over the nightmares, then?" It's supposed to sound more like a friendly well-wishing, but somehow it's sad – sad to him that soon this isolation could all be over, all be, dare he think it, _forgotten. _

"I don't think it's me," admits Hermione, and he's sure this time that she snuggles down further into his arms, as if she longs as much as he does to be closer together. "I think it's you. You being here…" she hesitates only slightly before saying, "…holding me."

He hates to say it, to ruin this moment where she's in his arms and he's trying in vain to control the rabid butterflies in his stomach, but he supposes she's probably already figured it out by now, being the smartest witch of her age, and if she hasn't, well, she deserves to know. "I have to leave, dear," his voice is quiet, even though he doesn't intentionally make it so, but he knows she hears him, because she tenses against him, her grip on his waist becoming almost painful.

"The full moon," she says. He's been right all along, then – she knows, hopefully understands without him having to explain it to her; he has faith that she will, as she understood his condition so readily in her third year, when she'd been but his student and he but her teacher.

"Yes," he feels the need to confirm her suspicions, even though she undoubtedly already knows that she's correct. "I can't risk it here." He hopes she hears the undertones – the _I don't want to hurt people_, the _I need to be alone for this._

She nods against him, blows out a taxed breath against the back of the cheery, floral couch. Before he can move to keep her in place, she's shifting between his legs, and he fears for an utterly petrifying moment he thinks that she's going to get up, to walk away without looking back and let him leave without a second thought, without a single word exchanged.

But she just turns over so that she can face him, her stomach pressed into his hips, her chest pressed into his stomach, and brings her hands to his face, strokes her thumbs across his mouth, across his cheeks. She just stares at him for a long minute, and he stares back, his arms limp at his sides; then Hermione leans forward and presses her lips to the corner of his mouth, painfully soft. "When it's over," she whispers when she draws away, a tear escaping one eye to run down the side of her nose. "Come back."

In a heartbeat his arms go up around her, and he wants to kiss her but doesn't, just hugs her fiercely to him and leans his cheek against hers, buries his face in her hair, trying not to hurt her too badly with the sheer ferocity of his desperation.

O0O

He has trouble finding Cabin 4A, afterwards.

He thinks of using his wand, if only to light his way in the dark forest, but he's left it with Hermione, concerned more for her safety than for his own; he thinks of asking the Muggles at the campground office to point him in the right direction, but remembers that he trusts the wards he commanded Hermione to construct after he left more than he trusts the dozens he initially cast. So he stumbles through the darkness, barely noticing as various brambles and branches slice his face and scratch his arms – he's already covered in too many bruises and abrasions to count – the numbness that always encompasses his brain after his transformations not helping in the slightest.

He wishes, hopelessly, selfishly, for Hermione to be here with him, if only just to provide sight of something other than the monotonous trees; the trees and the darkness, everywhere he looks, are starting to grate on his nerves more and more with every passing moment. He even wishes that his watch would go back to ticking, if only because it would be a normal sound – something to ground him, keep him from spiraling into the gut-wrenching despair that seizes him so often during the full moon and the days after – but he's somehow smashed it in his uncontrollable werewolf form.

He sees it at last, though it's almost like a mirage in the darkness for the skill of Hermione's wards, just a hazy smoke-like image on his exhausted eyes. There's a thrum of magic, an electric shock that runs through him like wildfire, and then he's through, through and able to see the humble abode clearly. This is, he thinks, the most relief he's felt since he was thirteen, sat in the common room surrounded by his friends who told him that they wanted to help him, wanted to _accept _him like no one but Dumbledore had ever done.

He drags his feet up the rickety porch steps, and he's so tired that even that simple movement pains him, makes him long for the strength he had a week earlier, even though he'd thought it a fickle amount at the time. He hesitates before the front door, his hand raised almost to the knob, the and it's the first time he's been still since transforming – he notices that the prickle is mercifully gone from his skin – hesitates because he's never before seen anyone other than the three boys who were brave enough to go through it with him so soon after a full moon.

He almost turns away, almost goes back to his aimless wandering and pathetic wondering at the state of his watch, but the front door flings open so fast that it almost hits him in the face.

"Professor Lupin," she says. She looks flustered, her hair fanned out around her head in a wild mane of gold and brown and the odd flaxen color that she only has one strand of, beneath all the rest.

He smiles faintly, raises his arms out from his sides only to let them fall back again, because it still doesn't feel _right _for him to be the one to instigate such contact, even though he's itching to touch her, if only just to make sure that she's not some figment of his imagination, that he's not out cold somewhere from the exertion of his transformation.

She reaches up to his face, her middle and forefinger alighting gently upon what he imagines is a cut, for the way it stings. Her lips are parted gently, and he has to swallow to keep from doing something rash like moaning, even though he wants to. Instead, he consents to greet her, as he's failed to thus far; "Hermione," he says lowly.

Then her arms are around his neck and her fingers are under the collar of his burgundy shirt that _somehow _survived it all, and she's dragging him down to hug him like he's been gone for _years _not hours, and the delight that overtakes him is so violent that he doesn't even notice she's trying to speak to him as he draws back just enough to kiss her.

She stops trying to talk to him after that, just looses her fingers in his tousled hair and clings to him as they stumble backwards into the sitting room, barely able to keep their footing. It's warm inside, he registers vaguely, warmer than it was outside even though the fire that's been burning throughout their entire stay is now doused, leaving the room under the mercy of the harsh fluorescent lighting from the single lamp.

"Remus," she tries to say, but his lips are so insistent that she ends up mumbling nonsense. She brings her hands to the sides of his head, pulls him briefly away from her so sternly that a cold feeling settles into the pit of his stomach, because _maybe she doesn't want this after all_. "Remus," she says, her brows furrowed in concern. "Are you alright?" She rubs her thumb over that same scratch under his eyebrow, and this time her pale skin comes away stained with his blood; he wonders, momentarily, if she hates having his blood on her hands as much as he hated having hers on his.

He's relieved – relieved that she's not scolding him for wanting this, wanting _her_ and relieved that she's calling him by his first name now, because his title right then would have been the undoing of his conscience. His gaze softens as he looks down at her, and he trails a lazy caress down the side of her jaw, leans in to plant feather-light kisses in the wake of his fingers. "I am now," he breathes into her ear, then fondles the shell of it in between his lips, with barely-there pressure.

She still looks skeptical, but lets him hold her all the same, lets him spill open-mouthed kisses up and down her neck like his time is running out, like the moment he falters she'll flee. Able to bear it no longer, he works his way up to her face in a manner of moments and kisses her hard on the mouth, lets his hands, which had been resting on her hips, come up between her shoulder blades so that he can pull her up against him, her chest to his chest, her hips to his stomach.

He backs up with her in his arms, their kisses frenzied, and almost trips over the coffee table; Hermione steers him away, aims them at the couch before settling down into the overstuffed cushions of it, pulling him down on top of her. He settles his elbows on either side of her, continues to kiss her as her fingers work at the buttons of his checkered shirt, the tickle of her fingertips against his chest making his heartbeat speed tenfold and jump to his throat. He remembers for a moment that he shouldn't be doing this, shouldn't be lying with a girl who's half his age even if he _loves _her, damnit, but then her hands are roaming over his chest, and the skin contact feels so good that he doesn't realize where she's touching until it's too late.

Her fingers find the network of scars that criss-cross under the thin hair on his chest, right over his heart, and she falters, tilting her head to see him in such a way that her lips pull from his, heartbreakingly lethargically. She looks at him in wonder, in pity that he always hates even though he tries not to in this instance, then back down at his scar, smoothing her palm over it.

"How?" she asks, still breathless, and he is lest fascinated than he should be at the way her lips move when they're bruised so. He shakes his head, bows his head in what he hopes will be a sufficiently adamant look to turn her away from this particular path of interrogation.

She keeps her hands flattened to the panes of his chest and sits up, forcing him to move with her, so that she ends up straddling his lap as he kneels on a particularly badly stained hibiscus. She works her hands up under the shoulders of his shirt and slides it off him, has some trouble with the cuffs but ultimately is successful enough to be able to discard it over the back of the couch, almost carelessly. Her eyes never leave his, and he marvels slightly at the intensity of her gaze, at the agile way her fingers work without her full attention.

She finally looks away to examine his scars – all of them, every single one she takes at least a minute to caress and study – her eyes half-lidded but rapt as if they were wide open, his arms looped loosely, low around her hips. When she's done that she goes back, and in the same order – he's no idea how she remembers it but somehow she does, is able to – and kisses each one, kisses the scars that Remus has never before allowed anyone to _see_, let alone tend to so attentively.

Any doubt that he may have harbored about her feelings is vanished then.

O0O

"We need to go back."

In the end it's Hermione that says it, sitting on the couch in the sitting room with her legs folded underneath her on the fourteenth day since her rescue. He's trying in vain to make them dinner, and until a moment ago she'd been laughing and enjoying the amusement – Remus can't cook for his life, and is accustomed to living off others' meals, and he's somehow managed to burn the pasta he's trying to boil.

He sets down the metal spoon that he's been trying to save their dinner with, and turns to find her looking down at the book in her lap. Her jaw is set, her entire posture tense enough to make him worried – worried that she might be serious, might not be just trying to convince herself as she so often does.

He swallows, nods respectfully even though he wants to disagree furiously. "Why now?" he asks.

She closes her book, abandoning all pretenses of continuing to read it, and tosses it forward onto the coffee table with such force that it flies off the other end and comes to rest, crumpled, on the floor. Remus barely notices the title; it's _Of Mice and Men._ "I've just noticed how comfortable we are here," she says, and it's as if it's a bad thing, even though it's the best thing there is. "I'm worried that if we don't go now we never will."

He wants to argue that there really isn't anything wrong with that, but his pasta is beginning to bubble over, so he turns back to the stove without replying and prods at it with his spoon until he realizes that he only has to turn off the burner. So he does; he reaches down and spins the large black dial to the left until the steady hum of the electric coil stove fizzles into cool silence. When he has no excuse left to keep from answering her, he gazes at her wearily over his shoulder, and there's something in her face that tells him she's realizing for the first time just how much older than she he is, how much more broken and wizened.

"Would that be so awful?" the words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, sounding small even though the only other sounds in the house are the creaking of the old logs that make it up, of the old ceiling beams that hold up the roof.

There's a flicker of something in her brow – a smidgen of that fierce concentration, contemplation – but then she's looking at him in shock, her mouth hanging open. "Have you lost all sense of duty, Remus?" she asks incredulously, unfolding her legs from underneath her, her feet slamming down onto the floor. She stands, cocks her hips to one side and plants her hands on them, her eyes narrowed to slits. "We cannot continue to put our own desires before the needs of the Order if we're going to win this war!"

"Well, now that we're speaking in a practical sense," he retorts, and he doesn't want to argue with her but it's against his quick-witted nature to sit there and take her abuse, "I suppose we should've gone back a while ago." It comes out much more venomously than intended, and his voice is raised like he doubts it's ever been with her.

She looks hurt, and he expects her to shout back at him, would really prefer that she hit him and kick his shins and stomp on his feet rather than what she does next; she goes into her bedroom and comes back out with her jacket on, her trainers laced up. There are dried tears on her cheeks as she hands him his wand, and he wants to reach up to dash them away but is afraid that she won't let him, so just accepts what she's trying to give him.

She starts to clean up the botched attempt at pasta, scooping it with the spoon he'd been using out into the trashcan that they'd bought for their tiny kitchenette. He decides that she's right – if they're going so far as to buy things to add to their living accommodations, going so far as to think they're going to be there for long enough to need a larger trashcan – and that they need to leave. He just doesn't want to, doesn't want to have to share her with the rest of the world, doesn't want to have to worry about what other people will say about the teacher who fell in love with his ex-student, but more than anything doesn't want to face reality. It's impossibly selfish of him, he decides, and that surprises him because he's never really been a selfish person.

She replaces the pot that he'd been using in the overhead cabinet and shuts the door, blocking it from view. Remus is almost regretful that he's not a better cook.

"Better late than never," she says finally, and her voice is flat, listless.

He tries not to frown, he really does. "One more night?" he asks, and his voice is like a plea, because they've only had six days together – he's only had six days to know her the way he wants to.

She looks down at her feet, shakes her head sadly. "We have to go now," she says, her voice wobbly.

Hermione holds out her hand to him, and he knows she means to Disapparate, but he seizes her by the face and presses his closed mouth to hers, sparingly, his wand hanging out between two of his fingers; he can't bring himself to care that it might fall, because holding her seems so much more important in this instance. One of her hands comes up under his chin, and she can't seem to decide whether to pull him closer or push him away, so she settles for just resting her fingers against his Adam's-apple, her thumb applying wavering pressure to the side of his throat as her hand quivers.

Remus can't help but feel like it's the last time he'll be able to do this for at least a very long while.

She pulls away all too soon, seizes his hand without ceremony, and Disapparates.

O0O

For some reason he's unsurprised to find himself in the yard in front of the Burrow. She's still clutching his hand so tightly he fancies that he can hear his knuckles popping, but then he's clutching her back just as tightly, his fingers threaded through hers.

The grey-green, tall grass that surrounds the place is coated in frost, and it's chillier than Remus remembers it having been at the cabin; her wards, then, were extensive enough to protect even from the less-than-mild climate at the beginning of spring. There's a light breeze, rustling their clothes as well as it rustles the surrounding landscape, but there's no sign of life past that; there are no red-haired children playing outside, no jubilant laughter dancing on the air.

They walk down the dirt path to the Weasleys' back door hand-in-hand, and she still doesn't speak to him but it's enough that she's not distancing herself from him, not shying away every time her shoulder brushes his. He pauses, just before she raises her hand to knock, and almost Apparates back to Cabin 4A, but then she drops his hand and he decides that he really wouldn't care to be there alone.

The sound of her fist against the rickety blue door hurts his ears.

He watches her blatantly, takes the minute or so that it takes Molly Weasley to answer the door to memorize her features as if he hasn't studied them a thousand times before, hasn't already committed his every waking moment to savoring her.

The door swings open and there's Molly in all her motherliness, looking exhausted as ever but more morose than usual beneath the heavy bags under her eyes, the unwashed state of her floor-length dress. She stares at them for a long moment, as if she'd been expecting somebody else, and then her expression lights up and she drags them inside.

"Hermione, dear," she gushes, pulling Hermione down into a hug that crushes her in the uncomfortable, get-off-me way. "Where have you been all this time?"

She holds Hermione out at arms length, and the girl forces a smile, though her shoulders are forced up near her ears. She doesn't seem to know how to answer that question, and to be honest he doesn't either even as she looks to him for help. She doesn't have to, however, as Molly pounces on Remus, with an "Oh, and _Remus,_ how are you?"

He hugs her back and tells her that he's fine, tells her he's fine again when she insists that he can't possibly be. He feels guilty for it, but he's almost eager to get out of her grasp – he fears that any moment she'll say something about him and Hermione, because there doesn't seem to be any way that she _couldn't _know. It's like she's obvious on him, from her smell to the marks her mouth left all over his body, from the way he looks at her over Molly's shoulder to the way she almost unconsciously inches closer to him once the portly witch lets him go.

He feels as if he's falling, because everything is out of his control now – they've been sucked back into the whirlwind that is the war, and there's nothing he can do to steady their progression that is, however erratic, steadily away from each other.

"We've all been so very worried," Molly is saying, her hands clasped in front of her chest. "We got your post, of course – quite the odd way that you sent it – but that's hardly proof of anything, in times like these. Didn't explain much either, dear," she looks expectantly to Hermione again, and the girl shifts her weight from foot to foot uncomfortably.

"I was… unwell," she says at last, and Remus knows that she's aware it's a lame excuse, but if she's using it then it must be the best she can think of for the time being. "Professor Lupin was kind enough to help me recover."

He's briefly horrified that he's gone back to being her professor, but can do nothing to change that in the presence of Molly and whoever else may or may not be in the Burrow. He notices that they're both looking at him, and wonders if Molly's asked him a question before he realizes that they're looking for his input on the conversation. "Uhm, yes," he clears his throat awkwardly, tries to adopt the tone of an elder talking about someone who is merely an acquaintance many years his senior. "Miss Granger was quite unwell. I didn't think it wise to risk Apparation." He notices that her face falls at the name he uses for her, but she, as did he, accepts the blow in silence.

Molly smiles at both of them in turn, claps her hands together delightedly. "I'm happy to have you two back," she says. "The others will be so happy to see you."

O0O

He wonders that night if she's sleeping.

Molly's been kind enough to let him stay on the couch overnight, and it's not quite as overstuffed as the one in their cabin, but close to it. He's got his fingers knit together and resting on his stomach, and for some reason the ceiling is very interesting to him; he doesn't think it so but assumes some part of him must, as he's been lying awake watching it for the past few hours so intently that he's been unable to sleep.

He remembers her nightmares vividly, remembers how much he hates the sound of her crying, sobbing out in the night and screaming that she's innocent, that she _didn't take anything_. He remembers her telling him that it was he who allowed her to sleep at night, who soothed her when he held her.

He wishes he could do that now, to storm up to the room she's sleeping in that's really Ginny's and wrap himself around her until she's forgotten she's scared, forgotten that they need to fight this war and can't instead just go back to that cabin in the Muggle campground that for some reason she never took the wards off.

Remus sees a flash of pure silver out of the corner of his eye, flitting past the window, and a terror grips at his heart, twisting it in all the directions that hurt the most, but when he looks there's nothing there but the eerily empty field that surrounds the Burrow. He stands anyways, propels himself out of the couch cushions so quickly that he stumbles over the thin woven rug, has to catch himself on a side table and ends up setting a lamp waddling from side to side on its base.

There's a commotion upstairs, a flurry of movement that he can hear even from three floors down, a snatch of some conversation between Molly and Arthur that's frantic and hushed. He pads into the kitchen as if there's something horrible on his heels and peers up into the darkness that blankets the staircase, not realizing that he's holding his breath so religiously that it's straining his chest.

Two wand lights go on at the top of the stairs, and Remus squints at them, can barely make out Arthur and Molly's faces illuminated from below. "Arthur," he calls up, trying to keep his voice low even though Hermione deserves to be woken, deserves to be included in whatever is happening. "What's going on?"

Arthur touches his wife's shoulder fleetingly, and she hurries off up the next flight of stairs, towards where he knows Ginny's room is. Her husband comes down towards him, holding his wand out to illuminate the way, dressed, for some reason, in his work clothes. Remus' stomach drops as he sees the wizard's expression, and his blood goes cold so quickly that he can't breathe, even though he knows that doesn't make sense.

"It's starting," says Arthur, his voice grave. "You-Know-Who is attacking Hogwarts."

Remus doesn't have time to process that before Molly is running down the stairs without Hermione behind her. His heart skips a beat, he's sure of it – maybe it even skips two, or three – all he knows is that one moment he's frightened and the next moment he's paralyzed, because he's come so far since that rescue that he can't even comprehend the thought of her being in danger, being hurt.

More than that, he can't comprehend the thought that he may not be able to save her this time.

"Where is she?" he asks, just as Molly opens her mouth to speak.

Molly looks at him with a hollow, horrified expression. "I don't know," she says. "She just said that she knew where they'd be, and Disapparated."

All he can think is that she doesn't have her wand.

O0O

He can't find her. It's not appalling, he supposes, considering the sheer volume of the people piled into the school's Great Hall, but he can't help but wish he could see her _now_,could hold her _now _instead of later, when he found her. And he will find her, because the alternative was inconsiderable, impossible given her brilliance and her aptitude for defensive magic and _how much he loves her_.

He's elbowed his way through the throng at least a thousand times, and he knows that if she's here he would have found her by now, would have at least caught a glimpse of her even if it were just for a moment, just as she hurries off to join her friends. But he hasn't, so he decides that she must still be on his way; as much as it pains him, he stands by the entrance to the Hall and watches as the injured and dying are carried through in levitated gurneys, in the arms of their comrades – because somehow in this instance, for this night they're all comrades, no matter the age and no matter the House and no matter the name.

He can't help but think that that's horribly fitting for him and his witch, that this may be the only time that they're considered equals by anyone other than each other. The thought, he knows, is one that will nag at him for years after this day, will haunt him; he'll live through it though, as long as he lives through this – he'll struggle through their relationship if it kills him, if she'll let him.

Remus doesn't know how long he's been standing there, almost inanimately, when he feels someone come up beside him. He turns, almost expecting it to be her even though it's too tall to be, and finds the Auror Kingsley Shacklebolt, his expression stern, eyes grim. He isn't wearing his usual hat, and there's a bandage that wraps around the crown of his head to under his chin, a stark white even though it's cream-colored against his dark skin.

"Remus," he acknowledges, and it's almost a relief to know that his voice is as deep as it's always been – it's a relief to find some sort of familiarity in all this chaos.

"Kingsley," he says.

The large man doesn't speak for a long moment, letting Remus stand and watch the people flowing through the door in silence, his eyes bouncing over every person who enters with a flicker of disappointment.

"Who are you looking for?" he asks at last, and somehow it makes Remus sick that it's phrased casually, as if hoping to see your friends alive instead of dead is a normal occurrence. Though, these days, it might be; Remus hasn't been paying enough attention lately to know.

He doesn't know how he can lie, not when all he can do is think how she might not walk through that door, might be carried, not when everyone else he knows is already safely ensconced in the Great Hall. "Hermione Granger," he admits to Kingsley, and somehow the Auror is the only one he trusts not to judge, not to be outwardly disapproving.

Kingsley nods sagely, his look still solemn. Remus knows that Kingsley's figured them out already, however it is that he calculates these things; he assumes this is why he makes such a good Auror. They watch in silence for a few long minutes, and still she does not come staggering through those doors, but then, she also is not carried through.

"You are a great deal older than she," says Kingsley.

Remus' eyes don't leave the flow of bruised and battered people, now almost a trickle, coming through the doors into the great hall. "Yes," he says, and there is a deep, innate ache in his voice, because he's lay awake holding her as she sleeps, dragging his fingers over her youthful skin and contemplating that very thing. "And painfully aware of it."

Kingsley doesn't respond. Somehow his silence is response enough.

"If I'd only been able to convince her to stay in hiding," says Remus, almost to himself so that he's unsure if Kingsley can even hear him over the din of the crowd, "she would be fine."

Kingsley shakes his head a fraction, sadly. "No she would not," he says, and it takes Remus a moment to register that he's speaking to him, disagreeing with the words he wasn't even really supposed to hear. "Neither would you."

Remus looks at him questioningly, his eyebrows raised.

Kingsley doesn't even have to look sideways at him to know that he's questioning the Auror's reply. "You are both much too noble for that," he says, by way of explanation. "Both too eager to be martyrs."

Remus doesn't disagree, because he turns and sees her, stumbling through the doors to the Great Hall with a determined expression on her face, one arm around Harry and one around Ron, and she's dirtied and bruised and bloodied as the rest but she's _alive_, she's walking. His heartbeat speeds up, jumps to his throat and then drops to his stomach and then leaps to his throat in rapid succession, and the pounding of blood in his ears drowns out the rest of the world.

She sees him, and her eyes widen, desperation curling her eyebrows up and in as she throws herself away from Ron and Harry and forces her way towards him, slipping in between people faster and more efficiently than he's able to. Her hair's wild around her head, half tied back and half-not, and her cheeks are flushed, her wand clutched so tightly in her hand that her knuckles are white – he's glad she's found a wand, even though he's almost positive it's not hers.

He's not sure that the way he holds her can be called hugging, because it's painful and frenzied and much too tight to be strictly comfortable, but for a moment he buries his face in her hair and closes his eyes and he's back on the hibiscus-patterned couch, and their legs are tangled together, and he knows that they're going to live like this, a confusion of limbs and kisses on an ugly couch in a beautiful cabin, forever.

A/N: Yeah, it ends kind of abruptly. Sorry. I'd wanted to make it longer, but it's just much too much work – I've never written anything this long. IT TOOK ME A WEEK.

Anyways, please review and favorite :)


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